593
Cecilia Louisa Belville (1828–1892). Her father, John
Henry Belville (1795–1856), was an assistant observer
at Greenwich, and author of A Manual Of The Barometer
(London: R. & J.E. Taylor, 1849) and A Manual Of The
Thermometer (London: R. & J.E. Taylor, 1850).
Glaisher’s career is representative of the transition
in science in mid-nineteenth century Britain, when the
study of natural phenomena became a regulated and pro-
fessionalized fi eld. He helped to establish and organize a
network of people around the country, and promoted the
use of accurate, standardized instruments to record the
meteorological observations they supplied him with. He
correlated the data into reports, which were published
in The Times by the Registrar-General.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical
Society in 1841, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in
- From the early 1850s his rise in the scientifi c
community began. On April 3rd, 1850, he helped to
found the British Meteorological Society at Hartwell
House in Buckinghamshire, the home of Dr John Lee
(1783–1866).
Glaisher wrote the report for the jury of “Class 10,”
the category in which photography was placed at the
1851 Great Exhibition. On February 4th, 1852, he gave
a lecture on “Philosophical Instruments and Processes,
as represented in the Great Exhibition,” one of the series
of lectures given at the Society of Arts, reviewing the
Great Exhibition. Between December 22nd, 1852, and
the end of January 1853, a large exhibition of photo-
graphs was held there to coincide with the formation
of the Photographic Society on January 20th, 1853 (see
Taylor, 2002, 16–20). On January 26th, 1853, Glaisher
read a paper, “On the Chief Points of Excellence in
the different Processes of Photography, as illustrated
by the present Exhibition.” The Photographic Society
held its fi rst Ordinary Meeting at the Society of Arts
on February 3rd, 1853. Glaisher was elected on March
2nd, 1854.
There are references in contemporary journals to
James Glaisher having made photographs of architec-
tural and landscape views. Whilst it appears uncertain
whether any of these may survive, work that does remain
from this period are photogenic drawings of ferns made
by Cecilia Louisa Glaisher between approximately 1854
and 1856. A project in collaboration with the fern expert
and publisher Edward Newman (1801–1876), The Brit-
ish Ferns—Photographed from Nature by Mrs Glaisher
was planned to be issued in a series. Newman presented
a portfolio of ten positive salt paper prints to the Lin-
nean Society in London, along with a fl yer in which he
explained the intention of the work. Twelve prints were
shown at the photography exhibition held in conjunction
with the British Association for the Advancement of
Science’s meeting in Glasgow in September 1855. Al-
though the project appears to have been abandoned, two
albumen prints of ferns were entered by James Glaisher
in the 1885 International Inventions Exhibition held in
South Kensington, as examples of “Nature-printing,
taken over 30 years ago” (The Photographic Journal,
9:9 1885, 168). Prints from this exhibition became part
of the historical collection of the Photographic Society,
now at the National Museum of Photography Film and
Television in Bradford.
Glaisher helped to found and was President of the
Blackheath Photographic Society in 1857. He oversaw
the chemical side of the production by A.J. Melhuish
(1829–1895) of albumen prints for Charles Piazzi
Smyth’s Teneriffe: An Astronomer’s experiment: or,
Specialities of a Residence Above the Clouds, which
was illustrated with tipped-in photo-stereographs, and
published by Lovell Reeve in 1858. A member and ref-
eree of the Amateur Photographic Association, Glaisher
sorted and examined the photographs submitted to the
Association by its members, producing detailed an-
nual reports on the numbers, sizes, and merits of the
processes and pictures.
In 1862, on behalf of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, he began a series of
experiments during high-altitude balloon ascents with
the aeronaut Henry Coxwell (1819–1900). The experi-
ments included measuring how temperature varied with
altitude, examining the humidity and electrical condi-
tion of the atmosphere at different heights, recording
the sun’s spectrum and taking measurements of the
intensity of light.
He appears to have twice attempted to photograph
during balloon ascents. Describing one ascent from
Wolverhampton on September 5th, 1862, he wrote: “On
emerging from the cloud at 1 hr. 17m. we came into a
fl ood of light, with a beautiful blue sky without a cloud
above us, and a magnifi cent sea of cloud below, its sur-
face being varied with endless hills, hillocks, mountain
chains, and many snow-white masses rising from it. I
here tried to take a view with the camera, but we were
rising too rapidly and revolving too rapidly for me to
do so; the fl ood of light, however, was so great, that all
I should have needed would have been a momentary
exposure, as Dr Hill Norris had kindly furnished me
with extremely sensitive dry plates for the purpose”
(The Photographic News, 6:210, 444, 1862). On the
second occasion, his eleventh ascent, made from Wol-
verton in June 1863, he attempted to photograph with
a camera provided by Melhuish, but was unable to do
so due to strange weather conditions (see The Times,
July 2, 1863).
Glaisher was elected President of the Photographic
Society in 1869, following Sir Frederick Pollock. It’s
longest serving President, he held offi ce until 1892,
except for an interval in 1874–5 when he resigned
and the Presidency was offered to William Henry Fox